I paid for my sins tonight. Like Buzz Lightyear, I'm always sure, even when I'm occasionally wrong. In my defense, I have learned to repent...very quickly.

Well, if you've been waiting for me to get my due, I got it tonight. The referees didn't show up for my 10-year old daughter's game, so I was asked to ref. (Hint: If anyone ever asks you to do this, run. Screaming. Far away.)

It was a terrible experience. I had parents from both teams yelling at me. The opposing (assistant) coach questioned me on every call. I just wanted to roll up into a fetal position and have someone bring me my blankie.

No such luck. Sixty minutes of Hell. It was made worse when Dave Lewis of Novell's legal department approached me at the end of the game to thank me for refereeing the game. He was one of the parents from the other team - perhaps the only one who hadn't spent the game cursing my existence. I had even let his daughter get clocked by one of our players, and he didn't complain.

I felt so bad that I turned this post - which had started out as a post parodying a job announcement Novell has put out for a new general manager of the Americas - into a post that recognizes Dave's absolute human decency.

People like Dave make the world a better place. Thanks for the kind words, Dave. I appreciated them tonight. I don't always deserve them.

About the author

Matt Asay is chief operating officer at Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Prior to Canonical, Matt was general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, an open-source applications company. Matt brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay.
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